Tag: driving

Pont in French means bridge or span, we would see a few of them today.

Each morning there would be a new and interesting car parked out the front of the hotel. The Tesla Model X had come down all the way from Norway, I think the Citroën was a little closer to home.

Today we were picking up a rental car for a couple of days to visit some areas outside of Nimes. On the list today was a visit to the museum and replica of Chauvet Cave near Pont d’arc. We had a set time to take a guided tour of the replica cave, so we needed to get our rental car as soon as the place opened.

Today was going to be one of our longer days in the car. We were travelling down to Luxembourg City, and to get there we would travel through at least 3 other countries. We set off after a quick breakfast in the hotel back the way we had driven into Holland. At least the highways are wide, and there wasn’t too much traffic. Dad drove us out of Amsterdam before we had a quick break at a road side services, complete with electric car charging station.

In the morning Dad and I left the hotel to collect the rental car from the central station. Gare du Midi is much larger than Gare du Nord, where we had been taking trains from. There were a lot of shops and places to eat. We found all of the car rental places together and commenced negotiations.

We checked out of the hotel fairly with a big drive ahead of us. We headed north-west towards the border with Norway. There isn’t very much between Inari and Norway. Trees, some reindeer, more trees, mosquitoes, and rain. We managed to find a lot of rain and mosquitoes. Even though Norway is not a member of the EU, they are part the Schengen Area (like Iceland). If we blinked we might have missed the border crossing, just a tiny sign on the side of the road that said Norge.

We checked out of the hotel and got our luggage out the front and the door man asked for our driver’s name. “Praveen”, he went over to the desk and picked up a phone, which was connected to a really REALLY loud megaphone pointed at the car park. There were about 10 cars and drivers waiting for their passengers. “Something something Praveen something something” and one of the cars started moving.

In the past couple of weeks we have been driven around India in a couple of different forms of transport. From rickshaws and tongas to the iconic Ambassador and large vans. We’ve been on multilane highways and toll roads and down tiny windy streets lined with shops. What is impressive is not the number of car accidents every year, which is an astronomical number, and the number of deaths – but the accidents that don’t happen. So far I am yet to see an accident (knock on wood). The number of close calls has been enormous, but somehow at the last moment the bike will always just merge slightly left, or the rickshaw with change direction just enough.